The Wasted Privilege of Voting

Let me confess this first: I used to be apathetic and only voted for presidential elections. In the past few years, I've "grown up" about this important right. When I read news from around the world and see how people in other countries so cherish the right to vote and struggle for it, it almost feels like a moral duty to exercise my right to vote. 

This year, the city of Cincinnati experienced an extremely low voter turn out, with the approximate turn out rate of about 30%. Even worse, I'm convinced that informed and intelligent people are not the majority of those who show up at the polls. I'm concerned about us, America. All of us. Let me tell you why by describing my voting experience this year, even though this only touches the tip of the iceberg. 

Since we now live outside of the Cincinnati city limits, I sadly was not able to vote on city issues, but I can tell you about voting in a small "village" in Hamilton County. I was supposed to choose 4 village council members and some board of elections members. I got two fliers from candidates on the council that said essentially nothing substantial about what their vision was for our village prior to elections. One of the candidates came by in person with his wife and talked to my husband. I looked up every person on the ballot online and could not find any information about who I was voting for, except for one person on Facebook. When I went to the polls, two other candidates gave me their cards, which also said nothing substantial. 

I know this is a tiny example, but how is it that there is an expectation of voting blindly? I can't vote for people to represent me when I don't know who they are and what is important to them. But people do that every election. People need to care and demand that they are informed. 

Larger example: The big battle in the mayoral race for Cincinnati was over the Cincinnati Streetcar. There are claims that it would be worth it to deal with all the litigation costs of backing out of all the contracts already in place for a project that has already started construction, and that somehow this would be cheaper and better. There have been no real numbers to prove this, but people voted based on a candidate's position on the streetcar anyway (but only about 30% of the city voters). Now our mayor elect wants to scrap a project that is in line with all the up and coming cities across the country. That could be a whole long rant, but I don't want to ruin my Friday.

Shouldn't we want more- demand more? Doesn't the precious right to vote deserve more thought?

I Might Never Not Be Sore Again

June marked my 30th birthday. I don't feel particularly different; really 29 almost seemed less interesting. I will say that one marked difference between being say, 26, and 30 is it seems like no matter how much I work out, I will feel sore. That, and it takes longer to get back into shape when it's so easy to fall out of it.

It's my second summer back in Cincinnati, which means it's the time of nearly suffocating, heavy, hot air. You can't be outside for a few minutes without breaking a sweat. Disgusting, but I suppose I chose to move back here. The husband and I have love-hated having a yard for the first time. During the spring we played the weed or plant game (definitely weeded non-weeds and left real weeds a few times) with the landscaping that was left by our predecessor. We are learning all sorts of things: pruning rosebushes, that hostas need to be separated when spanning 4 feet in diameter, vines are annoying parasites... We also have our first vegetable garden, which is slowly growing in this oppressive Midwest heat. I'll have to post a picture soon. We're also getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. These little jerks in our back yard are savages, truly. I once ran out fully clothed in the heat with a hoodie and pants on to water the garden and got bit square on my neck. Bastards!

Aaand because I love me some lists, here are a few...

Summer highlights 2012 in the 'Nati:

1. Loveland Bike Trail- This is a great trail that is fairly flat, protected, and mostly shaded. It's great to stop in Loveland for lunch and browse around, or do Newtown to Milford, etc. 
2. Lunken Bike Trail- A (much) less shaded and shorter option, you might catch a glimpse of some old-school planes around the airport.
3. Bunbury Festival- I'm really excited about this. Great line-up and I love the park.
4. Washington Park- Opens today! And Over the Rhine, one of my all time favorites, is performing for the grand opening on July 22, and I am crying inside because we are out of town that week and can't see it.
5. Smale Riverfront Park- Just another beautiful new piece to the downtown scene. See the pretty lights and water?

Guilty pleasures.. for my workouts... right... 

1. Boyfriend, Justin Bieber. Every time I acknowledge that I find this song catchy, I die a little bit inside. So wrong. But so catchy.
2. Payphone, Maroon 5. The music video is stupid. It makes no sense. Why did he save the girl and run out and then become the fugitive? What about the real robbers? Were they actually in a relationship before? IT MAKES NO SENSE. But I love belting out this song in the privacy of my own car. I love that it's jaded.
3. Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepson. This is a vapidly silly song. I blame Jimmy Fallon for getting it in my head by creating this video with her and his band. They are having so much fun cheesing it up. $#%^#&.
4. Pause, Pitbull. Tell me this doesn't make you want to stop drop and pause.
5. Wild Ones, Flo-Rida feat Sia. I love Sia. Also, I kept listening to this because it sounded to me like she was singing "Running with Wilson, I'm on the prowl." Which made no sense. Wilson? Like the volleyball in Castaway? No, it's wolves. Which actually makes sense. I just love fist pumping after the opening riff and the beat comes in. 

The Good, the Bad, the Weird

My facebook has suddenly become cluttered with links, and my anal-retentive side just can't handle it!  So here is the my breakdown of the past few weeks.

The Good:

• Sara Kruzan, a girl who was sentenced to life without parole at the age of 16 for killing her abusive, adult pimp, will have a chance to live some of her life outside of prison.  This is huge.  Why wasn't this a bigger story?
• Jon Stewart, my hero, makes some of the most sane and wise comments I've heard about the Arizona shootings.  Thank you.
• Sudan is voting to recede the South from the North, which would separate the Christian south from the Muslim north.  Will this finally put an end to the years of civil war and genocide?  Here's to hoping it's a start to real change.... 
• A nice spotlight on the embodiment of a real, true believer public defender: Judy Clarke, who will represent Jared Loughner.
• A man with an IQ of 46 was wrongly convicted and executed 70 + years ago.  He was just pardoned.

The Bad:

• The term anchor babies, code for we hate immigrants, hits the political spotlight.  Kentucky is trying to pass a bill that is even worse than Arizona.  Just what we need our politicians to waste their time on instead of making real, positive change.
• The Arizona shootings.  It's a sad story about the failures of our mental health system and innocent lives being taken.  
• Or the stupid: Palin throws out the term "blood libel" to lash back at criticism against her rhetoric and it's possible implications that it helped incite the Arizona shootings.  Typically ignorant, since the term is generally used to refer to the false accusation that Jewish people murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.  That is wonderfully helpful, Sarah.  Please refer to Jon Stewart's comments.  Of course it's not her fault.  But would it be a good moment to stop and think about how it is a problem that crazy people's words are reflecting the dialogue in politics?  YES. There just is no need for angry responses right now.
• Haiti is still majorly struggling.  It's been a year since the earthquake.
• A man with an IQ of 46 was wrongly convicted and executed 70 + years ago.  He was just pardoned.

The Weird:

• Dead birds dropping from the sky??  Arkansas.  California.  New Zealand.  Kentucky.  Italy.  Uh. This isn't like, a few dead birds.  It's hundreds.  Thousands. Does it not seem like the beginning of an M. Night Shyamalan movie?  But allegedly, this is not weird?

Political Depression

I'll be honest- I come from an immigrant Taiwanese family that was politically disengaged for as long as I can remember.  We did not talk much about politics.  For a long time, politics did not interest me.  In my adult life, I am still playing catch up to many years of apathy.  As I do so, I think I am more aware of the political apathy of people in my every day life and it disturbs me.  So I'm writing, I guess, to pump myself up.

As much as watching commentary and news on the political landscape depresses me, I force myself to be in tune.  I am realizing- maybe too late- that our country is in trouble.  We're in trouble because people like Sarah Palin are able to run for Vice-President.  People who, as Republican Lisa Murkowski stated recently, lack intellectual curiosity.  (There appears to be at least one Republican who can be somewhat reasonable and honest.)  We're in trouble because when I saw Mike Huckabee running for president a few years ago, he seemed extreme to me, but now seems relatively normal. 

How easy it is for us middle class folks to just stick our heads in the sand when it comes to politics.  We go about our lives doing the best we can, being good people.  I don't think this is enough anymore, if it ever was.  Educated, reasonable people must have a voice in what is going on in politics.  Someone has to tell Mitch McConnell it is an abuse of his political position to declare his mission is to prevent Obama from having a second term.  Stop wasting our time!!!

Ok, stepping down from the soapbox, now.  But seriously, please care.  If the likes of Sarah Palin or Mitch Romney (who believes in magic underpants) end up running the country, we really are done for.

Rand Paul supporter wants apology from protester

Rand Paul supporter wants apology from protester

Hey lady. I really think you should apologize to me since I stomped on your head!

What????

We saw Bill Maher recently, and a section of his show discussed the idea that patriotism has morphed into this nearly delusional idea that admitting anything is wrong with the United States is unpatriotic.  As Bill says often, we shouldn't want our country "back", but we should want it "forward."  He raises a good point: why does Obama get criticized when he is honest about something that the US has not done well or was wrong in as being weak?  Ridiculous.

Anyway, back to this guy who stomped on a 23-year-old woman's head: man up, apologize, you dumb brute.  But that's probably expecting too much.

Strange Phenonmenon: Making Ignorance Chic

I love this opinion article in the NYT: Making Ignorance Chic, by Maureen Dowd.  It's so sad but true- and I fear that we as a country have fallen prey to "Sarah's America."  Our country was founded by thinkers, deep thinkers.  Once upon a time, it was, as Dowd points out, "it was cool to be smart."  The mind boggling trend the past decade has been to favor the "common sense" folks with "American" values over the "intellectual elites."  Here's what I wish I understood better: where did we depart from the marriage between intellectualism and common sense?  The two aren't mutually exclusive and I don't know where the idea of the intellectuals versus... the ??? came from. 

Kurt Vonnegut's Look at the Birdie, published posthumously, has a haunting short story called "The Petrified Ants" where some anthropologists are looking at an ant civilization that has been found petrified in stone.  They observe this progression of the ants from intellectuals to being taken over by violent brutes.  Sound familiar?  Good read.

In large part, this recent rash of racist "patriotism" and intellectual hatred has to be racially based.  Why else would there be this insinuation of suspicion... or blatant outcry against well-educated people (a.k.a. Barack Obama).  Let's face it: the Republicans (as in the vocal party, I won't speak for everyone obviously) hate the idea of a black man being president.  They hate the idea that our country has become so diverse.  And they have capitalized on that hatred by reigning in uneducated bigots to do the dirty work for them.  I recently heard Michelle Alexander speak on her new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  Her premise is fascinating, and perhaps at first glance, a little strong.  But the more I think about it, the more I think this is true and that this permeates the climate in our country.  Without so many words, there is a rebellion going on- an attempt at regaining control and a perception that the majority has "lost control" of the country to the minorities. 

And what can we do about it?  Are the remaining sane people in the country too tired, too fed-up, too disdainful to stand up against this snowball of bigoted craziness?  We can't give in, we can't get disenchanted and stop being involved.  I am guilty of this- I change the channel because I can't stand the reality of this happening in the news, I ignore politics.  I'm going to stop doing that though, because we have to fight the erosion...

Women to Dread

When Sarah Palin made her political debut, she rocked my world in a very bad way.  With every vacuous and ignorant remark she made, I would cringe.  I swore that if she got into office I would leave the country.  I had never been this incensed about a politician in my lifetime.  This is not how I imagined women taking leadership in politics would be.  Shrill soundbites, meaningless phrases... all purporting feminism.

Ladies, this is not feminism.  It is the opposite!  The Republican Party/Conservatives have created a monster breed of unintelligent female political candidates.  It's sheer evil genius to try to trick the less than educated conservatives into... I don't know, thinking they are somehow progressive?  I'm not even sure if that's the draw.  But since then, all intelligent women can shake their heads with dread and agony...  the Palin minions have multiplied!

In no particular order:

Linda McMahon- The telling response in a NYT article:  I asked her, for instance, whether she was in favor of reforming entitlement programs that, along with military outlays, represent the principal forces driving spending levels ever higher. “We’re going to have to look at them,” she said, “but I can tell you that that has got to be done in the legislative arena, with open debate, with people on both sides really tackling this and talking about it. We’ve got to strengthen our entitlement programs. We’ve got to make sure that our contract with seniors is maintained and upheld.” But, she added: “I’ve made a specific point of saying I’m not going to go into that on the campaign trail, because I don’t think that’s appropriate. I think the appropriate arena is the legislative arena.”  In other words, she doesn't know how to answer that question.  She's never thought about it. 

Christine O'Donnell- All the stupidity of Palin without the weirdly endearing qualities.  I could have sworn in her closing remarks that she read "we will defeat our enemies and see triumph over freedom.  The LA times had a transcript (Christine O'Donnell-Chris Coons debate: Full transcript) and filled it in for her: "We will cut spending. We will reform our government, and we will defeat our enemies and see triumph of (ph) our (ph) freedom again."  Hopefully for her it was just a weird accent thing and not a misread.  That wasn't the worst of it, obviously.  She interrupted, she deflected real questions, she couldn't think of a Supreme Court case...

KARIBJANIAN:  Well, we've talked about the Supreme Court, and obviously a United States senator has the opportunity to determine in a way the make-up of that court.  So what opinions of late that have come from our high court do you most object to?
O'DONNELL:  Oh, gosh.  Give me a specific one, I'm sorry.
KARIBJANIAN:  Actually, I can't, because I need you to tell me which ones you object to.
O'DONNELL:  I'm very sorry.  Right off the top of my head, I know that there are a lot, but I'll put it up on my Web site, I promise you.

Good Lord, woman, you don't even have the case down that your party eats for dinner.

Sharron Angle- Told a bunch of Latino students they looked Asian.  For lack of a better expression, WTF?

Where have all the smart women gone?  Or does this just prove that women really still are hitting a glass wall unless being exploited as "women" in politics?  Sigh.